by Dwayne Phillips Doing something that goes beyond what is required often leads to discovery, and discovery may be a wonderful unintended result. Many years ago (in the last century), I was involved in an upgrade to an existing system. There were new requirements that required new capabilities. Some of the computing hardware was to […]
Entries Tagged as 'Solutions'
Discovery as an Unintended Result
April 14th, 2022 · No Comments
Tags: Alternatives · Design · Learning · People · Requirements · Solutions
The Next Great Solution or Problem
March 14th, 2022 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips Someone will take the next great solution and turn it into the next great problem. I am pretty sure that today someone will arrive with the next great solution. That will solve some great problem that has plagued us far longer than plaguing should have plagued us. Then, some time after now, […]
Tags: General Systems Thinking · Problems · Solutions
Solutions Already Exist
December 23rd, 2019 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips Many of our problems already have solutions in waiting. And many of these are effective and inexpensive. Person A: My kid won’t stop chewing on fill-in-the-blank. Person B: Put a drop of fill-in-the-other-blank on it. It will taste bad, and the kid will stop chewing on it. Person A: Oh. … Person […]
Tags: Humility · Problems · Questions · Simple · Solutions
Would Anyone Mind If…
May 27th, 2019 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips Would anyone mind if we simply did this correctly? There are some fields of endeavor where the problem has been solved. The solution is known and many have employed the solution successfully many times. I know we don’t usually do this type of thing here, but would anyone mind if we did? […]
Tags: Problems · Simple · Solutions
The Winding Path to the Solution
November 26th, 2018 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes—make that almost all the time—the path from the problem to the solution is winding. “We had a problem; we solved it. Let me describe how we found and implemented the solution.”—a satisfied problem solver. Ah, nothing more satisfied than a problem solver just after solving a problem. Listen carefully. They will […]
Tags: Agility · Problems · Solutions
When the Solution is Worse than the Situation
November 1st, 2018 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips Will the solution solve anything? Will the solution make the situation worse? “Let’s fix that!”—the cry of the optimistic solution-er. Will the solution improve our situation or only make it worse? A long-time colleague once described a situation he faced decades ago. Things at home were a mess. His wife and kids […]